Peninsula War clash- napoleonic rebels and Patriots

After a decade of avoiding napoleonics Andy's blue Peter Highlanders forced my hand into starting a French force for the peninsula war.

I'd finally managed to scrape together a 24 point force, the Hanoverian Legion, for a game of Rebels and Patriots:

- a unit of skirmishers

- a large unit of line infantry

- a regular unit of line infantry

- 2 small units of good shooting light infantry.

Andy and Paul joined forces and fielded a force of the 92nd Highlanders (real skirt wearing Scots):

- a medium cannon

- three units of line

- one unit of aggressive grenadine shock infantry.

The game started off with Paul punishing a unit of the French chasseurs at the very edge of its range, this was a taste of things to come, major Dick Stiel led the large unit of line and the other light infantry into cover , in the hopes of taking out the cannon. Leutenant Helmut Tickler manourvered out of the guns range whilst the skirmishers rolled a double one!!!!

Andy bravely maneuvered his Highlanders into the trees clearly fearing French musketry, the grenadiers also cowered away, leaving the cannon to inflict more punishment on the chasseurs, who moved into the woods to fire at the Scots, eventually being joined by the skirmishers, this constant trickle of fire disordered one the units and Andy had to come out of cover to deal with them.

On the other flank the chasseurs inflicted punishment on another unit of Highlanders whilst the grenadiers dithered about whether to advance or not. The English crewed cannon continued to inflict long range casualties on the French though.

The game was fairly balanced until Andy managed to roll a double six resulting in a double activation for one of his units, allowing them to get into a good firing position and then form close order , the subsequent volley fire saw off the French chasseurs. I, characteristically, responded with a double one one of line units advancing straight into crippling fire of two units of Highlanders.

The resulting fire managed to see off enough of the Hanoverian Legion to hand victory to the Highlanders.

The gun really did its job, but the French light infantry responded in kind. It was a good game and the rules translated to Napoleonics well.

But the main thing to remember is that not a single Frenchman died!!!!